Search Dan Syrstad | Taking a Different Road

T-Mobile G1/Google Android

Posted on October 25, 2008
| 2 minutes
| 287 words
| Dan Syrstad

I got a G1 on Wednesday and I’m liking it. I’ve had an iPod Touch for over a year now and I’ve liked that, except for the keyboard. The introduction of Apple’s App Store and the revocation of apps from it concerns me.

On the G1, I definitely like the keyboard and its ability to switch seamlessly between Wi-Fi, T-Mobile Hotspots (included with the data plan), 3G, and Edge. It’s also a 4-mode phone which means you can take it pretty much anywhere in the world. I think Android has a lot of potential. It’s got some rough edges right now, but I’m sure it will get better. I also like the call audio quality and signal strength. Much better than Verizon so far.

It comes with a 1GB SD card - I just ordered a 8GB microSD card today for $20 (frys.com).

I didn’t like the fact that they didn’t launch with accessories - like a holster (!). I was also told that it shipped with a USB/headphone adapter. It doesn’t. It is a USB/earphones/microphone and the earphones suck for music. I have some nice Bose headphones I’d like to use, but no accessory to be found. I’m breaking out the soldering iron this weekend!

The apps so far are free and pretty decent. Shazam has an app too. I never used Shazam before. It is cool. Riding in your car listening to a tune and want to know what song it is? Shazam listens to the music for 20-30 seconds and very reliably (hitting 100% for me) identifies the song. It then provides links to buy it on Amazon’s mp3 store and to YouTube.